Ring Of Honor issue statement on Honor Re-United

This past week Ring Of Honor toured the UK for the second time in the same year, for the first time. Earlier this year Ring Of Honor presented the Honor United Tour and due to“Tremendous response in the UK”they returned for a second tour.

This tour was to be unlike any other since the launch of Honor Club as it would not air live on Ring Of Honor’s service but rather, exclusively on Fite TV. Fite TV is a service which helps promotions of pro wrestling, boxing, MMA, Kickboxing, BJJ and Muay Thai present shows on PPV or free weekly TV, live or On-Demand online. According to the Fite TV website: “FITE is the premiere digital network for Combat Sports providing hours of live, PPV and on-demand programming to combat sports fans all around the world. FITE streams more events than anyone else”

Ring Of Honor announced that these shows would be Exclusive to Fite TV but didn’t publicise this much, I searched the ROH website to find a statement from July 31st, 2018 saying: “FITE TV and Ring Of Honor Wrestling announced that the ROH Honor Re-United Tour will be available exclusively on the FITE TV platform through a unique sponsorship of the inaugural ROH International Cup.”

After the tour Ring Of Honor sent an email out to the subscribers of the service with another statement on the UK Tour.

The email reads:

“HonorClub members,

First and foremost, we want to apologize. Heading into the UK Tour, we found ourselves faced with a situation where we would have to forego streamingthe tour live but due to our great relationship with FITE, we opted for a solution that would still allowthe events to be seen as they happen.

In hindsight, this did not feel fair to you and this is never our intent. All three events are available now for HonorClub members and we will do everything in our power to assure that all touring shows will be presented live going forward.

Thank you for your continued support.

Ring Of Honor.”

In a statement to me, Michael Weber, the COO of FITE TV, added to the original statement from Ring Of Honor by saying: “ROH has been a long and valued partner and we will continue to work with them on all of their televised events”

My Thoughts

Trying to decipher what ROH are exactly saying here could be difficult but I’m assuming they had either monetary or technical issues which Fite TV were able to help with but in exchange the tour would air live, exclusively on Fite TV. I feel that Honor Club members would have appreciated a more open tone from the beginning from ROH as I feel the fans can be somewhat understanding when things are explained beforehand. This seems like a genuine apology from ROH, I’m not sure of the amount of subscribers Honor Club has but I hope it’s not the beginning of the downfall of Honor Club as in the statement they didn’t promise to present shows live but rather promised to “do everything in our power” to present shows live.